After giving birth to a child, the woman's breast begin to lactate within a few days producing breast milk. Breast milk is a superior nutritional food source for an infant when compared to artificial baby food. Millions of women breast feed their infants for up to one year in order to provide their infant with antibodies and proteins such as but not limited to lactoferrin. A healthy lactating woman secretes approximately 500 to 700 milliliters of milk per day. This amount of fluid can exceed the daily intake of an infant. As the nursing woman must continually express the milk in order to maintain the lactation process many women will use a breast pump to express and capture the milk for subsequent consumption by the child.
One issue with utilizing a breast pump is that is requires at least one hand of the nursing woman to manipulate and hold the pump during the pumping process. Most conventional breast pumps have a conical shaped breast shield that is superposed the breast and positioned such that the center of the conical breast shield is generally aligned with the areola of the breast. When a woman wishes to pump milk from a breast, she typically must remove her bra in order to position the breast shield in the proper location. The breast shield is connected to a reservoir or bottle that is used to store the milk as the milk is expressed from the breast. During the pumping process the woman must hold the reservoir as it fills with fluid so as to maintain the breast pump components in the correct location to effectively express milk from the breast.
Currently there are no devices to assist the woman in holding the breast pump components in the proper position during the pumping process. While there are nursing bras that have cups with detachable portions allowing access to the breast, these conventional bras offer no method of providing assistance with the holding of the breast pump components in the proper position during the pumping process.
Accordingly, there is a need for a bra configured to provide access to the breast without the need for the complete removal thereof and wherein the bra is further configured to releasably secure breast pump components so as to substantially reduce the requirement for a nursing woman to hold the breast pump components utilizing their hands.